Pub Date : 2023-09-29DOI: 10.1017/s0007680523000417
Nicolás M. Perrone
In April 1959, editor-in-chief of Time magazine, Henry Luce, spoke vehemently to the World Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce, encouraging business leaders “to unite [their] energies on something which is really fundamental—fundamental to civilization and economic progress. That something is the advancement of the rule of law.” Together with lawyers, business leaders had “the responsibility to see that the rule of law prevails in every corner of the business world.” Luce insisted that international trade needs “legal certainty” and business leaders would do better by focusing less on “certain rules and regulations” and more on “basic and universal rules under which all business could prosper.” One of the proposals he asked the audience to endorse was German banker and politician Hermann Abs's Magna Carta (a formative proposal to enact what is known today as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS).
{"title":"Governing Global Capitalism: A Lawyer's Perspective","authors":"Nicolás M. Perrone","doi":"10.1017/s0007680523000417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007680523000417","url":null,"abstract":"In April 1959, editor-in-chief of Time magazine, Henry Luce, spoke vehemently to the World Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce, encouraging business leaders “to unite [their] energies on something which is really fundamental—fundamental to civilization and economic progress. That something is the advancement of the rule of law.” Together with lawyers, business leaders had “the responsibility to see that the rule of law prevails in every corner of the business world.” Luce insisted that international trade needs “legal certainty” and business leaders would do better by focusing less on “certain rules and regulations” and more on “basic and universal rules under which all business could prosper.” One of the proposals he asked the audience to endorse was German banker and politician Hermann Abs's Magna Carta (a formative proposal to enact what is known today as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS).","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135199431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-29DOI: 10.1017/s0007680523000429
Neil Rollings
It is common for historians to focus their attention on turning points in the past. The risk with this is that it overstates how dramatic change was and the extent of stasis and stability in between those turning points, at its most extreme form in notions of punctuated equilibriums. We need to remember the importance of continuities across those turning points and transitions in order to understand the roots of change and have a more nuanced picture of the nature of change. This is as valid for the relationship between firms, governments, and global governance frameworks as it is for any other historical subject.
{"title":"Business and Global Capitalism: Continuities and Change","authors":"Neil Rollings","doi":"10.1017/s0007680523000429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007680523000429","url":null,"abstract":"It is common for historians to focus their attention on turning points in the past. The risk with this is that it overstates how dramatic change was and the extent of stasis and stability in between those turning points, at its most extreme form in notions of punctuated equilibriums. We need to remember the importance of continuities across those turning points and transitions in order to understand the roots of change and have a more nuanced picture of the nature of change. This is as valid for the relationship between firms, governments, and global governance frameworks as it is for any other historical subject.","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135199434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-27DOI: 10.1017/s0007680523000594
Q. Slobodian
The twentieth century is a fascinating time to follow the relationship between global governance and firms because of the persistent tension between principles of mass democracy and private ownership and control. It is possible to narrate the entire century as a series of contestations between firms and international organizations. At times, firms have had the upper hand. At other times, the principle of popular sovereignty has threatened the self-perceived rights and prerogatives of business. In my own work, I have homed in on ruptures at two main points.
{"title":"Competing Projects in Global Governance","authors":"Q. Slobodian","doi":"10.1017/s0007680523000594","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007680523000594","url":null,"abstract":"The twentieth century is a fascinating time to follow the relationship between global governance and firms because of the persistent tension between principles of mass democracy and private ownership and control. It is possible to narrate the entire century as a series of contestations between firms and international organizations. At times, firms have had the upper hand. At other times, the principle of popular sovereignty has threatened the self-perceived rights and prerogatives of business. In my own work, I have homed in on ruptures at two main points.","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139335644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-09DOI: 10.1017/S000768052300034X
Justene Hill Edwards
This article examines the business of American slavery from the perspective of enslaved people. It draws from narratives of enslaved fugitivity and interviews with the formerly enslaved to interrogate how they understood the business imperatives of slavery in the antebellum American South. It argues that enslaved peoples’ economic knowledge was cultivated through the violence inherent in the business of slavery, from their ideas about banking to their understanding of entrepreneurialism. Building on the current literature on capitalism and slavery, this article shows that slavery's brutality shaped enslaved peoples’ knowledge of commerce in nineteenth-century America.
{"title":"“This Slavery Business Is a Horrible Thing”: The Economy of American Slavery in the Lives of the Enslaved","authors":"Justene Hill Edwards","doi":"10.1017/S000768052300034X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S000768052300034X","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the business of American slavery from the perspective of enslaved people. It draws from narratives of enslaved fugitivity and interviews with the formerly enslaved to interrogate how they understood the business imperatives of slavery in the antebellum American South. It argues that enslaved peoples’ economic knowledge was cultivated through the violence inherent in the business of slavery, from their ideas about banking to their understanding of entrepreneurialism. Building on the current literature on capitalism and slavery, this article shows that slavery's brutality shaped enslaved peoples’ knowledge of commerce in nineteenth-century America.","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48204184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-06DOI: 10.1017/s0007680523000272
Grace Ballor
In the late twentieth century, the European Union (EU) emerged as a global leader in setting environmental protections, including vehicle emissions standards. But member state consensus around environmental rules did not come easily, and the regional norms eventually set by the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, had complex origins. This article argues that common emissions standards were ultimately achieved through a public-private process during the program to create the Single European Market in the 1980s and 1990s. For regional policymakers, standards were key to achieving an internal car market and strengthening the auto industry's global competitiveness; for many European carmakers and their transnational business associations, common norms could facilitate economies of scale and level the playing field. The “liberal environmentalism” born out of this convergence of interests produced common standards that fell pragmatically between the greenest member states and those most invested in protecting their national champion firms.
{"title":"Liberal Environmentalism: The Public-Private Production of European Emissions Standards","authors":"Grace Ballor","doi":"10.1017/s0007680523000272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007680523000272","url":null,"abstract":"In the late twentieth century, the European Union (EU) emerged as a global leader in setting environmental protections, including vehicle emissions standards. But member state consensus around environmental rules did not come easily, and the regional norms eventually set by the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, had complex origins. This article argues that common emissions standards were ultimately achieved through a public-private process during the program to create the Single European Market in the 1980s and 1990s. For regional policymakers, standards were key to achieving an internal car market and strengthening the auto industry's global competitiveness; for many European carmakers and their transnational business associations, common norms could facilitate economies of scale and level the playing field. The “liberal environmentalism” born out of this convergence of interests produced common standards that fell pragmatically between the greenest member states and those most invested in protecting their national champion firms.","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46473973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1017/s0007680522000733
Bronwen Everill, Khadidiatou Diedhiou
The relationship between capitalism and slavery has been contentious because, in the Atlantic economy, enslaved people functioned as commodities, as labor, and as assets. The transition away from the Atlantic slave-trading system across the nineteenth century affected the stakeholders in these economic functions differently. Compensated emancipation in Senegal provides an opportunity for thinking about the possibilities and limitations of compensation in facilitating capital's continuity. This article traces how individuals who had invested in enslaved labor managed the transition of emancipation and reinvested their compensation claims. It explores how the process of compensation addressed the problem of commercial debt in ways that allowed for a continuity of many of Senegal's urban business elite and their family firms through the end of the nineteenth century.
{"title":"Profiting from Slavery and Emancipation: Compensation, Capital, and Collateral in Nineteenth-Century Senegal","authors":"Bronwen Everill, Khadidiatou Diedhiou","doi":"10.1017/s0007680522000733","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007680522000733","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The relationship between capitalism and slavery has been contentious because, in the Atlantic economy, enslaved people functioned as commodities, as labor, and as assets. The transition away from the Atlantic slave-trading system across the nineteenth century affected the stakeholders in these economic functions differently. Compensated emancipation in Senegal provides an opportunity for thinking about the possibilities and limitations of compensation in facilitating capital's continuity. This article traces how individuals who had invested in enslaved labor managed the transition of emancipation and reinvested their compensation claims. It explores how the process of compensation addressed the problem of commercial debt in ways that allowed for a continuity of many of Senegal's urban business elite and their family firms through the end of the nineteenth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138531898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-23DOI: 10.1017/s0007680523000247
Robert H. Gudmestad
{"title":"The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America. By Joshua D. Rothman. New York: Basic Books, 2021. 512 pp. Paperback, $19.99. ISBN: 978-1-5416-1660-8.","authors":"Robert H. Gudmestad","doi":"10.1017/s0007680523000247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007680523000247","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43488244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-10DOI: 10.1017/S0007680523000168
Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato
{"title":"Vendors’ Capitalism: A Political Economy of Public Markets in Mexico City. By Ingrid Bleynat. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021. 264 pp. Bibliography, index. Hardcover, $90.00. ISBN: 978-1-5036-1460-4.","authors":"Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato","doi":"10.1017/S0007680523000168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680523000168","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47042068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-10DOI: 10.1017/S0007680523000119
C. Taverner
{"title":"Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London. By Laura Gowing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021. x + 275 pp. Bibliography, index. Hardcover, $39.99. ISBN: 978-1-108-48638-5.","authors":"C. Taverner","doi":"10.1017/S0007680523000119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680523000119","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9503,"journal":{"name":"Business History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45875570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}